Mobile wireless communication systems typically employ many base stations (such as cell sites) to provide wireless communication throughout a given geographic region. As a mobile unit (or mobile station) may traverse the geographic region, the communication to and from the mobile unit may occur through one or more of these base stations. To maintain an ongoing communication session during such transitions between base stations, various hand-off methods have evolved to transfer the wireless communication with the mobile unit from one base station to another base station, while maintaining such an ongoing call or session.
In the prior art, for some of the various methods utilized during such hand-offs, the communication session may suffer from some degree of interruption, which may be noticeable to the consumer of wireless communication services. As a consequence, a need remains to provide for comparatively seamless hand-offs, which do not interrupt ongoing communication sessions and which are imperceptible to the consumer.
In addition, while other prior art systems may provide comparatively seamless hand-offs, such hand-offs typically utilize considerable network resources. In an Autoplex® system, for example, in addition to switches and base stations, another network entity referred to as an Executive Call Processor (“ECP”) selects a server at the new cell site, while another network entity referred to as a Call Processing Database Node (“CDN”) transmits various data link messages to the current and new cell sites, adding an additional path to the existing call, directing the new cell site to activate a wireless voice link, and directing the current (serving) cell site to direct the mobile to retune to the new wireless voice link at the new cell site.
As a consequence, a need remains for a wireless communication system to provide comparatively seamless and imperceptible hand-offs. In addition, such a wireless communication system should be reasonably efficient and capable of cost-effective implementation, eliminating or minimizing the use of additional network resources.